We always break open our new composition books with lists of topics the students are interested in exploring and writing about – Atwell’s writing territories. However, this year they wrote their first list on a territory map – a place that has become their own, personal space: bedroom, basketball court, beach and book shelves

For the first couple of assignments, to get the ideas flowing and build confidence, the students chose topics from their territories. I now call these assignments A Slice of Life which is a delightful idea I read about in Two Writing Teachers’ blog. We even display an anchor chart so the students can easily refer to the expectations of this assignment.

I then looked to Steineke and Daniels for ideas on first writing assignments.

#2

A getting to know you interview (p.26). This was a timely assignment since we had just discussed how asking high level questions deepens thinking, discussion and understanding complex texts. This was a perfect assignment to begin generating interesting, high level questions.

#3

Students charted their own identity maps (p.32) and even managed to surprise each other with some of their personality traits.

Damyanti Biswas is an author, blogger, animal-lover, spiritualist. Her work is represented by Ed Wilson from the Johnson & Alcock agency. When not pottering about with her plants or her aquariums, you can find her nose deep in a book, or baking up a storm.